IP Address v. 5.1.1

IP related information in seconds

Developed by yyy

Original idea by:stuffedtiger79 and Alpaca

German translation by: chrisskhc


Based on code by:
Coskun Oba - See in The Code Project

and
Saurabh Nandu - See in the C-Sharp Corner

Released on: September 26th 2005

Compatible: Desktop Sidebar Build 85 and above.

Special Thanks to:
GoMa
KeithI
marines
cs97gh1
Mattisking
chrisskhc
eitaneko

I really appreciate your help! I couldn't have done this without you. Thanks!

v. 5.1.1 fixes a problem with the external IP so it's recommended for anyone to upgrade !!! It also allows you to set the panel to take the external IP information from other XML files.

Description
The IP Address v.5 panel allows you to see IP related information in a fast and visual way through Desktop Sidebar. It is a replacement for the DOS' "ipconfig" and "ping" commands.
With this panel you can see the following information:

• IP Addresses
  • External IP address
  • Internal IP address
• Network adapters
  • Name and description
  • Physical address
  • The network adapter IP address
  • Host name
  • Subnet mask
  • DNS servers
  • DNS Domain
  • Default gateway
• Pings [NEW]
  • The new version 5 allows you to ping addresses!!! This is the DOS' "ping" command replacement.

New Features of v.5

• Ping addresses and see their IP address.
• Fresh new look and feel with new XP-styled icons.
• An option to split the panel's information into groups: Network information, Network adapters and pings. That way you'll be able to find the information faster and easier.
• Better support for multiple internal IP addresses.
• Even more stable and organized than the previous versions.
• Small and organized propertied dialog box which will make it easier for you to configure the panel.
• A context menu which will also make it faster and easier for you to use the panel.
• Updated German translation (thanks to chrisskhc)
• Bug fixed.

Installation Instructions (Please read carefully !!!)
Upgrading the panel will reset all of the panel's settings so you'll have to

Upgrade Users
1) Download the file (IPPanel.DSPACKAGE)
2) Open it while Desktop Sidebar is loaded.
3) Follow the on screen instructions.
4) Restart Desktop Sidebar.
5) Open the file again while Desktop Sidebar is loaded.
6) Follow the on screen instructions.
7) Restart Desktop Sidebar (now you should see that the old version disappeared)
8) Open the file for the last time while Desktop Sidebar is loaded.

New Users
Download the file (IPPanel.DSPACKAGE) and open it while Desktop Sidebar is loaded.

Dear user,
Thank you very much for using the panel - enjoy it I did my best in order to ensure that the panel will work on any computer and in any condition. If you find a bug or if you have any questions please ask me here in this thread.
Notice that this is an Open Source panel which means that you can use or distribute it for free !!!
Please DO NOT refresh the panel too often - it might cause it to function improperly !!! Thanks.

The panel uses information from (http://www.showmyip.com)

Screenshot



Download IP Address v. 5.1.1

ENJOY !!!

if only the government delivered this fast on requests...

can you add dns, subnet mask, and default gateway to this.

basically all the info that shows up in ipconfig could be put in one panel.

itll be nice to have a ipconfig and a netstat panel

erm... sorry to keep editing this, but the icon wont work in your panel. maybe it needs to be extracted to a different location...

I don't want other to start developing before me so I have to develop as fast as possible.I always happy to help.Have fun!

To tell you the truth:I don't even know what is DNS and all of the other things you mentioned but I'll try to do it.Don't forget I did that panel in about 1.5 hours...
Come on,I was so happy that my panel worked that I didn't even looked at the icon,I didn't even tried to draw this icon. Maybe I'll replace it.

if you type ipconfig in the command line, it will list everything i mentioned. try to obtain all that info.

I'll try thank you.

Cool, but it would be more useful if it could show my networks external IP as I know my internal IPs as they're fixed.

It shows your external IP,I think.

It does show your external ip. Well done, yyy!

Thanks!

Actually I think the question was external IP for those who are behind firewalls/NAT. The panel shows the current assigned IP internally. Now if you have dialup, it will show it because that is the primary NIC adapter.

For example, my laptop at home shows 192.168.123.19 as its IP, but I have a wireless router which is connected to ADSL. That is currently 12.166.234.2

But great example of quick thinking though on the panel.

Also answer the question about Domain Name Service (DNS)...that is the ISP server that resolves names to IP. When you type www.desktopsidebar.com, your ISPs DNS server looks for the DNS server for DS and then says "Hey, the name is really this IP address".

when i came home from work and got online through my cable modem, the panel still displays the ip address from work. is there any way to refreash the panel?

Yeah, sorry, Indian_Mayhem you've got the right idea I'm in exactly that situation. Currently it displays an IP of 192.168.0.2, which I know as its a statically assigned IP from the router but knowing the external (or ADSL modems/routers) dial-up(?) IP address would be more useful.

I want to add lines to the plugin.Does somebody know how to add text lines?

Nice!

But wouldn't it be useful to auto copy the IP on click?!


Tillo

New IP Address Panel-new features added!!!Check the first post ^

That's very cool!!! First suggestion- It would be nice(since you decided to put the button below), to use it's dock property and dock it on bottom of your panel- This way the button will take the full length of the bottom of your panel whenever you resize it.

Bet generally, i like this plugin very much and i've already put it on my panel(!!!)

Best Regards!!!

Thank you.I'll try it.I don't want a too wide button,I want it to fit the text.Thank you anyway!

Works fine

But... There is not external IP As I have a local network, I'd appreciate this option because my internal address (192.168.N.N) is not very usefull

Also, it could be very fine to have the choice to display each element, including the Refresh button. Even if I want only the IP address, resizing the pannel doesn't mask this button.

Please Yyy, continue like that, your work is great

PhTor,Have you tried to refresh the panel?It should update your IP address if you do that.Thank you,I'mglad that you're happy about the panel I'll try to improve it as you said. :lol:About the external IP adress,can you see your actual IP address?I know that sometimes it is hidden.

Yes, I see the current internal address (192.168.N.N), with its submask and so on... But the external address, given by my provider (80.10.N.N) is not shown.

In fact the perfect pannel should display the internal and/or external IP, depending of the user's choice

So, if the user decides to display both of them, two cases :

1/ he is not behind a nat router so he has twice the same IP
2/ he is beind a nat router, he has two IP different

(Just for me, this is the most important change I'm waiting for )

I'm waiting for it too... The rest of the plugin is workin fine (some visualization option would be nice )

Maybe it helps you... I guess it is not possible, to get to know the external IP (if you use a router/ics) without the use of a external server. You can use e.g. http://www.whatismyip.org/ or make an own php script containing this: <?=$REMOTE_ADDR?>

I've at home (sorry I'm at the office ) some Samurize VB scripts returning the external IP without any external server

This evening I post the script if needed, and if it is "legal"...

I program in c# not in VB so it won't realy help me but I've found a site that tells you how to do it in VB.If I could only translate it to c#...It isn't that easy,though.

yyy- give me the site, I'll try to convert it. It should not be a problem.

-GoMa

helpppppppppppp

i tried to add the new IP panel, and i get an arror message that says

"Cannot create panel IPpanel.
Cannot create panel instance. Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

and then if i click "ok" to that, i see a square black box in my sidebar, with no title, it has the IPpanel info in it, but its not complete. and shortly after that, my sidebar crashes.

I'm in the same boat as most as well....Panel looks good, but it would be more useful to show the external IP rather than the one behind the router, and I vote for the visualations as well, but since I know yyy is a skinner, once the basics are down I am sure that won't be a problem.

Thanks for the work on this...

Coult69

Besides the button that flickers and the refresh that doesn't always work well,what other visual improvments do you think of?
Here is the site that have the code for external IP in VB.I'll be happy if you convert it to c#,thank you:http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programmin...Q_20932248.html.

stuffedtiger79,I've never saw that problem before.I tried to search for a solution but it's probably the code.I'll try to fix it later because I'm a little busy right now.
I'm very very sorry to hear that and I hope that it will be fixed.
If anybody finds a solution please post it.

If I was to put my two cents in, it would be nice to shorten the names so it's like this.

IP Address > IP
HostName > Host
Description > Desc

Just for those who keep DS narrow.
If you can get the external IP to display and refresh on it's own, then DS would be a nice "war-driving" tool.

stuffedtiger79-

It sounds like your panel isn't registered to me. Try the old fashioned regasm and see if that fixes your problem.

~acommonjo

Stuffedtiger79,please tell me if it helped you to use the old fahioned regasm.Thank you.

Weird sizing issue:

When I have this panel on autofit, after I scroll to the last line of text (as not all of it is on the panel and has to scroll), the panel resizes to include one less line of text. For example, when I started, it had 5 lines (IP, HostName, Description, Subnet, Default IP). When I scroll to see the other two lines, the panel resizes to show only 4 lines. BTW, is Default IP Gateway listed twice on my machine with two Subnet lines as well??

I also get those 2 times but others said that they don't.About the auto fit,I don't know.I've also seen that in other panels,I suggest you not to use that.Thanks for reporting!

I just intalled the New and Improve IP Panel and have a bug report and couple of suggestions.

The Refresh Panel text doesn't fit on the button for me. You might want to just make the text "Refresh", it would be more simplistic, and easier to center vertically on the button.

As suggestions I have a few that have been mentioned before, it would be nice if we could have a Panel Properties window to select the features that we would like shown on the panel, and possibly have a timed auto-refresh setting.

Also, I would like shorter titles as well. IP instead of IP Address, Host instead of HostName, etc.

Finally, as mentioned before a timed auto-refresh setting.

When this is all finished and you feel that it is perfect I think that this can be turned into a great example panel for C# developement. Including parts from the individual threads and describing what worked for you in the end.

~acommonjo

I'll do my best to help you all but I'm a little bit busy right now.Sorry for that but if I find the time I'll improve it-this is just the 1st version of the panel.If it will success I'll try to improve it.Thanks for replying!

Understandable. You have done a pretty good job with this and just proved how helpful the forum could be for everyone.

~acommonjo

i also tried the old fasioned regasm. same problem persisted. very weird.

stuffedtiger79 and bob.sherunkel-

Did either of you have the previous version of the IP Panel installed and did it give you any unexpected errors then? Also, what installation process did you go through for the Updated IP Panel? The error sounds familiar, but I can't replicate it now.

~acommonjo

Ok, installed fine but I have a few suggestions:

- it would be good if we could choose what info it displayed in panel properties
- An auto refresh (time between refreshes defined in panel properties)
- User defined labels (eg I might want it to say "rubber ducky" instead of "IP Address", or not?!)
- It to show the IP address of my modem/router (or external IP) as it still displays my LAN IP

Thanks for the good work, look forward to the next update...

i dowloaded it, opened the zip file, saved the files into my sidebar folder. i shut down my sidebar. then i clicked on the registry file to register it. and then i restarted sidebar and did the add panel thing and then everything went to hell.

i actually had to totally redo my entire sidebar because the IP panel just placed itself on the top of my sidebar, on top of all the other panels, it didnt have a title, and rightclicking on it wouldnt work, so basically i had no way of getting rid of it. so i had to scrap that whole sidebar, open another instance, call it something different, and put all my panels and stuff back... pain in the butt.

anyways, after it didnt work, i started to do the IP inside a stack so if it didnt work, i could close the stack. it still did the same thing. but i was able to capture the screen this time for the bug report before closing the stack. but that still didnt stop the sidebar from crashing every time i tried to add the IP panel.

i didnt have this problem with the earlier version of the IP panel. just this one. the earlier one worked like a charm. i also tried to do the conventional regasm thing. that didnt change anything either.

I am so so sorry stuffedtiger 79! I gave my code to few other users before releasing it and I didn't hear any problems from them.I will try to fix it.If you need any help just post it here.Sorry again.

yyy... try this one. The rest of you probably can as well. One note, it's recommended that you run this panel inside a stack. You'll have best results like that.

All I did was fix a few minor bugs, add lots of checking for nulls, and cleanup the icon loading, startup logic, and a little on the drawing. I hope this helps! It's a cool plugin.

Mattisking,thank you very very much.I hope that it will solve stuffedtiger79 problem. Thanks again for cooperating and for improving my panel,I'll put it on the first post.
Don't thank me,thank stuffedtiger79 ,alpaca-who thought of that idea and all the other people who are mentioned at the first post that helped me.

unfortunately the problem still persists...

is there any way to uninstall old files related to IPpanel and then reinstall it. I noticed that none of the plugins have an uninstall function. im not sure what files i can and should remove. i imagine IPpanel.dll and ippanel.dsplugin. but what other files. also, what changes should i make the to registry to effectivly uninstall ippanel.

just a recommendation to everyone else... before you install a new panel, try to backup the registry and sidebar settings. so that if the panel bombs, you can go back to where u started.

mattisking... the files u uploaded installs the ippanel in its own folder. so now i have two installations of ippanel, one in the sidebar folder, and another in a seperate folder inside the sidebar folder called ippanel. are you sure that your ippanel.reg file will completely overwrite the info in my registry that was created by the previous installation. can you reconfigure the ippanel.zip and its content to it directly puts everything into the main sidebar folder, just like all other plugins?

Stuffedtiger79,I'm sorry to hear that it didn't help you.You gave me an idea to auto add a backup of DS main files when installing a new panel.About uninstalling,all you need to delete are the files you mentioned.If you also copied the source code directory,delete that too.(You don't have to).
By the way,when you used mattisking panel,did you copy all the files in the bin sirectory directly to DS installation directory?You can't use them otherwise.

i'm sorry to say i still crash when i try and load the plugin

this is what i pull out of the log. i've gotten this error sence the first release:(

i didnt reallize i had to put the files in the bin folder into the mail ds folder. i did that... and viola... IT WORKS. mattisking ur good thanks a lot. it works now. phew